Charles in Charge: Prague, part 1

Sunday morning we gathered our belongings and took the quick subway ride back to the train station.  On the way, we stopped to take a look at one more church, St. Charles Church. Music is everywhere in Vienna, and concert opportunities abound. Outside every church there is someone selling concert tickets, so ticket sales are not unusual to see. St. Charles didn’t stop there, though.

This church also offers some sort of virtual reality experience, which I’m guessing probably shows you how some things used to look, but it still seemed like something from an amusement park. On the other hand, maybe it would’ve helped, as half of the inside was unviewable due to a huge elevator added in the middle that offered access to a panoramic experience—a chance to see the painted ceiling up close. Which is nice if you are paying, but we weren’t. It’s a strange thing to have in the middle of a worship space. Sometimes cathedrals feel like such sacred spaces, and sometimes they seem like a carnival.

The train to Prague was basically uneventful, but there is still a difference leaving neat and tidy Austria and moving into a former communist bloc country. Cute little rural villages dot both places, but as you move into the outskirts of bigger Czech cities, you see the big, characterless cubes that passed for architecture during the communist era.

After leaving our train behind, we walked to the Hostel ELF. It is convenient to the train station only a few blocks away, though somehow living up to the old “uphill both ways” description. It’s in the old and somewhat rundown Žižkov neighborhood, which apparently was a rather proudly rough area of town back before World War II. Now it seems to be (from what little I could observe) a working class area that hides a lot of everyday people behind the doors, often coming out to take the dog for a walk or smoke a cigarette. It also seems like the kind of neighborhood ripe for gentrification, as it is filled with the same stately buildings that line other portions of the city. But all of the slightly abused buildings in Europe look that way to me!

Hostel ELF is really hostel-ly. Young travelers from all over the world congregate on the patio at the top of the stairway that awaits behind the locked outside gate. Some of these young adults are having interesting conversations, comparing notes on travel and home countries. Others are pounding down beer, smoking weed, and debating which country has the hottest women.

Scary Elf

But it is also very inexpensive, provides bedding and towels, and is kept clean. We had a private room, so we could spread our stuff out without worry for roommates. Not that there’s that much space or that much stuff, but still. It’s almost enough to make up for its rather terrifying logo, which, if it’s an elf, it’s an elf that lives in a funhouse and may be promoting anarchy or working for Mr. Robot.

Time to explore Prague. When Brian and I were here last, it was 1993. We were fresh from our year in Nigeria, the Berlin wall had fallen 4 years earlier, and tourists were thronging to Prague. There was a feeling of new discovery of a place that had been under wraps for decades. Of course, the Czech people had suffered terribly in that time, but a sense of hope and optimism permeated our generation—we thought the world was open for good. That’s the feeling I remember from that trip.

As Lora and I wandered the streets of the Old Town, the Staré Mĕsto, which was less than a mile from the hostel, I remembered why I loved it. It looks like the setting for fairytales and legends. It is both breathtakingly beautiful and still has a bit of a sooty edge, and tourists are still thronging there. And unlike 1993, the menus at restaurants now include some English so that monolingual Americans like myself can still figure out what we are ordering.

The bridge tower, the charming astronomical clock on the town hall, the glorious churches, the majestic Charles Bridge, and the Prague Castle are still there. Also there is a lot of international shopping, from H & M to Reebok to Apple to Benetton. And McDonalds. Always with the McDonalds. Even KFC. So the world has found its way to Prague in the last 25 years, but Prague still holds onto itself.

We had dinner at a so-so Italian place that happened to be near the Old Town Square when we were hungry. Then we headed for the river. Still early evening, we hoped to see the Charles Bridge as night fell. We decided to cross over and explore the Malá Strana neighborhood on the other side, but when we got to the bridge we realized we’d overshot, and we were on a different bridge, which actually gave us a better view of the real deal. The golden day’s end light illuminated the city and the river, and we both mentioned over and over how glad we were that we’d come.

Beyond the bridge it was still one lovely street after another. Shop after tourist shop offered Czech specialties—scads of Bohemian crystal, garnet jewelry, intricately decorated gingerbread cookies, delicate woodcuts, and marionettes that I find sort of charming and Lora finds utterly terrifying. She is not down with puppets. Use that info as you will, family.

And then there’s the trdlo. I’m pretty sure there must be a better pronunciation, but we never learned it, so we just call it turd-low, which sounds like something much less appetizing than it actually is. Trdlo, and its identical twin trdelník, is dough wrapped around a metal spit and slowly browned and crisped as it rotates over a fire. It is sweet and sugared, and after being baked into a cylindrical shape, you can have it smeared with Nutella inside, or filled with cream and fruit, or filled with ice cream, which was our choice. It is tasty, but the dough is way thicker than a cone, so be warned that it is very filling. And melty—we watched a couple scrub the remains off of their shoes.

We crossed over the river again, slowly, on the Charles Bridge. Artists, merchants, and street performers have set up shop—especially artists specializing in caricatures—so if you’ve ever wondered what you would look like with a really exaggerated smile and a huge set of boobs, you know where to go. The lights of the bridge flickered on just as we reached the other side.

All the Charleses. Charles VI, Holy Roman Emperor, pledged to build St. Charles Church in Vienna in 1713 after an epidemic of the plague. He named it for St. Charles, who the patron saint of plague victims. The Charles Bridge in Prague is named after Charles IV, also the Holy Roman Emperor and the Czech king, who began its construction in 1357. Charles was indeed in charge. I feel sort of badly that we missed our chance to begin a whole line of Kristys or Brians, but that’s just water under the bridge.

I’m currently reading a novel that describes how the Nazis came across that bridge in 1939, marching in perfect rows while the Czech people protested to no avail. Statues of Mary, Jesus, John the Baptist, along with saints like St. Francis of Assisi, St. Anthony of Padua, and St. Wenceslas, the patron saint of the Czech state, peered down at the invaders. The Nazis renamed the streets and took over the businesses. They even took some children who could pass for Aryan and sent them away for re-education, while so many others went to camps. When the war ended, then the communist government took over and a new kind of oppression took hold. It’s so hard to imagine it all.  

Sometimes it can feel as though a city of beauty has sold its soul to tourism, with the virtual reality churches and the knick-knacks and the omnipresent McDonalds. But then you see the saints still standing watch on the bridge. And you think about what it means that there are Czech names on the streets, proud Czech specialty foods and goods, hotels and stores, and ongoing projects to clean and maintain towers and churches.

All in all we had a golden afternoon and evening, and it felt at least partly to me as if that early 90s hope had come to fruition, even as our homeland faces down some demons of its own.